Prerequisite knowledge

What you'll learn

Learn how HealthCare.gov was migrated to Terraform

Description

Terraform is a powerful open source tool that allows developers to manage cloud infrastructure as code. This empowers small teams to manage complex infrastructures that were typically the domain of specialized operations teams. However, this requires a new way of thinking about infrastructure design patterns. Whether you’re launching a new application or migrating a legacy system, the ability to spin up cloud infrastructure quickly while retaining flexibility, maintainability, and reuse is key.

Christian Monaghan explains how he and his team successfully migrated HealthCare.gov, America’s largest government website, to the cloud infrastructure provisioning tool Terraform, shares lessons learned along the way, and details how you can effectively use Terraform for your next project. Christian focuses specifically on the challenges he and his team faced and how they designed infrastructure provisioning with Terraform.

Topics include:

How to determine when Terraform is the appropriate tool

How to migrate live systems with zero downtime

How to import existing cloud infrastructure in place

How to design infrastructure patterns for reuse

How to structure Terraform code

How to create and manage Terraform modules

How to automate rollouts with CI/CD

How to test infrastructure changes

How to manage an AMI-based immutable infrastructure

Christian Monaghan

HealthCare.gov | Nava PBC

Christian Monaghan is the infrastructure lead for HealthCare.gov’s core systems and the cofounder of Nava PBC, a startup working across numerous federal agencies to radically improve how government serves people through technology. He lives in Washington, DC.